Collins
reportedly died after a lengthy illness in Scottsdale, Ariz., on July 9
at age 60. Chicago Tribune archival material suggests he might have
been 61.

The late 1970s was a boom time for Chicago television
investigations and Collins was at the forefront before moving on to NBC
News, where he worked on programs such as 1983-84's "First Camera."

For
WTTW-Ch. 11 in 1978, he helped expose a payola scandal involving
WDAI-FM. For WMAQ-Ch. 5 in 1979, he helped expose strip searches of
women by Chicago police. Other award-winning efforts included "Murder by
Natural Causes" and "Exploiters: Children for Sale."

"We try to choose stories in which viewers will be able to relate to the victims," Collins told the Chicago Tribune's Gary Deeb
at the time. "The strip-search story, for instance, didn't just dwell
on the fact that it happened to a couple of people; we approached it
from the standpoint of 'Hey, it could happen to you.' As we later found
out, it had happened to thousands of women in Chicago."

Through
WTTW, Collins also co-produced the 1979 PBS documentary on aging and
retirement, "Miles to Go Before I Sleep," narrated by Helen Hayes.

But it was as host of one of WSNS' earliest efforts, the late-night "Underground News," that
Collins initially gained notice. The Tribune, as the free-form 1970-72
program was launching, reported Collins was a 21-year-old from Lake
Forest College who began broadcasting at Highland Park High School,
where the paper said he started a campus radio station.

One never quite knew what was coming next on "Underground News." The eclectic mix of guests included John Lennon and Yoko Ono, the Grateful Dead, Sen. Eugene McCarthy, activist Abbie Hoffman, Mick Jagger, Joan Baez, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and Sen. Charles Percy.

"What was it exactly? Hard to describe," future Hollywood writer Bruce Vilanch
recalled in a 1975 Tribune column. "A talk show, but one that also
featured music. Nearly everyone on it was young, and not all of them
were foolish. A parade of headliners, from Woody Allen to Peter Max to the ubiquitous Jane Fonda
-- a three time interviewee, she held the record. A half-hour of
nightly conversation, exchanging of ideas and Earth News. And all of it
hosted by the genial, intelligent, and incredibly persevering Chuck
Collins."

Survivors, according to Variety, include Collins' mother, sister and two sons.

Unlike
that initial report, which sought to ignore many mainstream sites, this
year's report notes that more than 8 million people visit Chicago-area
news Web sites, but mainstream media dominate with three-quarters of the
visitors snared by the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, the
Tribune's RedEye and Tribune's ChicagoNow sites.

Most of the Internet sites included in the study, meanwhile, rely heavily on unpaid bloggers and reporters and meager financing.

“This
report shows us that right now, there is more competition for news
consumer eyes and ears than ever before, but we don’t know yet how this
nascent online news ecosystem will be sustained,” Thom Clark, president
of the Community Media Workshop said in a statement. “The roadmap for
vetted, authoritative information that frames the public debate is still
being charted.”

Chicago Public Media'sRobert Feder reports that newscaster Lauren Cohn -- a veteran of Chicago's WFLD-Ch. 32, WLS-Ch. 7 and WBBM-Ch. 2 -- is weighing a return to Philadelphia and an offer from Fox-owned WTXF-TV. Cohn left Philadelphia's WCAU-TV to help Fox-owned Channel 32 launch its short-lived 10 p.m. news as co-anchor in 2007; the late WFLD newscast lasted less than 2 1/2 years.

* * *

CBS
now has a Beta version of a Web site that combined Internet news, sports
and lifestyle content from some of its radio stations in New York --
newsers WCBS-AM and WINS-AM and sports outlet WFAN-AM -- and its
television station in the market, WCBS-TV.

CBS Corp. Chief Executive Leslie Moonves has indicated that the hub for New Yorkers, cbsnewyork.com, which is set to officially launch around Labor Day, will provide a template for other CBS markets once it's refined.

So
it doesn't take a lot of imagination to imagine a variation on the
concept eventually headed for Chicago, where the company owns WBBM-Ch.
2, WBBM-AM 780, WSCR-AM 670, WXRT-FM 93.1, WBBM-FM 96.3, WUSN-FM 99.5,
WJMK-FM 104.3 and WCFS-FM 105.9.

Comments

He was partially responsible for the establishment of a radio station at Highland Park High School, where I became initially interested in radio.

Later, when Chuck was a senior at HPHS, he would let me watch him do his night time show on WEEF, a commercial station licensed to Highland Park. The station was MOR during the day, but Chuck got to do a Top 40 show at night, and I was hooked!

When I went off to college, I lost track of Chuck. However, a number of years later I ran into him at WTTW. I took that opportunity to thank him personally for all his help.

I can't imagine what my life would have been like without his influence.

About this blog

This is an expansion of the Chicago Tribune column I have written since April 2005, and the columns I wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles’ Daily News for two decades before that. It’s TV, radio, newspapers and whatever, both locally and nationally. Beyond sharing what crosses my desk—and my mind—this will be a venue for you to share your takes with me as well as with each other. About Phil Rosenthal